COHASSET COMMENTARY: Time for a citizen revolt?

Last week, we learned Fred Koed skipped town meeting and a vote on our town manager to work Lawrence’s mayoral recount. According to the Patriot Ledger, this bothered some in town. It shouldn’t. Given his sorry record of late, and the muddled thinking he brings to most issues, we should wish M...

By Peter DeCaprio

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Peter DeCaprio

Posted Dec. 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Dec 6, 2013 at 6:18 AM

By Peter DeCaprio

Posted Dec. 6, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Dec 6, 2013 at 6:18 AM

Cohasset

» Social News

Last week, we learned Fred Koed skipped town meeting and a vote on our town manager to work Lawrence’s mayoral recount. According to the Patriot Ledger, this bothered some in town. It shouldn’t. Given his sorry record of late, and the muddled thinking he brings to most issues, we should wish Mr. Koed skipped out on all votes.

In a midnight email to colleagues, Koed claimed a “personal conflict” stood in the way of his attendance. He then gallingly reminded our selectmen that choosing our next town manager was “the most important job (they) have right now.” Not, apparently, as important as working Lawrence’s polls.

Mr. Koed can communicate with Mike Coughlin and Mark DeLuca as they go about suing the town, but can’t admit that he was in Lawrence instead of attending to our business. But, working the Lawrence recount and not being up-front about it is far less dishonest than his approach to blocking Bill Quigley’s appointment as chief of police or our town manager search.

Consider this: just two days after excluding Milanoski from our search, the Collins Center, which rewrote our criteria at the behest of Karen Quigley, recommended him as a finalist in Carver. The Carver and Cohasset job descriptions on the Collins Center website are virtually identical. It defies logic then that the Collins Center thought Milanoski a good candidate for Carver but not us.

So now Mr. Koed and Ms. Quigley force us to choose an unknown for town manager whose qualifications, according to the Collins Center, are identical to Mr. Milanoski. Because of them, we just spent $13,000 to roll the dice.

Mr. Milanoski was once a finalist for another town manager position only a short time into his tenure here. He declined because he was promised a two-year contract extension and he wanted to make sure Cohasset’s ship was righted. Were it not for the incompetence of our town counsel and the personal grudges of three selectmen, we would know exactly what we have in a town manager today and we would be assured of progress toward better municipal government.

Recently, Ms. Quigley and Martha Gjesteby have tried to undo the makeup of town committees and commissions based on individual attendance records. They would like to pack these commissions with people who will vote their way, and they have used attendance records as the excuse to boot loyal, hardworking townspeople that don’t share their views. If missing a meeting is enough to be kicked off the Conservation Commission, what does it mean when the selectmen chair skips a vote?

The politicization of town government by Koed, Quigley and Gjesteby continues amok because it can. We have no recall mechanism. Like Obamacare, Koed, Quigley and Gjesteby can ram through all votes on a party line basis with no concern for the will of the town because nothing is stopping them except good judgment and common decency.

Page 2 of 2 - In the 2011 four-way election for selectman, Diane Kennedy received 1,062 votes and Fred Koed 813. In 2013’s four-way election, Steve Gaumer received 906 votes and Karen Quigley 805. So, Kennedy and Gaumer garnered 20 percent more of the town’s vote than Koed and Quigley. If we had to vote on every issue before us, the Koed, Quigley, Gjesteby agenda would stand no chance. Bill Quigley would be Chief of Police, Mike Milanoski Town Manager, and conservation policies would be equitably applied based on the law instead of emotion and naked political ambition.

We once threw tea into a harbor to protest tyrannical policies and abject stupidity. Maybe it is time for another tax revolt. At the very least, we should make the ballot box a true extension of the will of the town.